Anybody who has ever been served a gourmet meal prepared in a hurry will understand the new Maserati Ghibli. The meat hasn’t soaked in the marinade long enough. The sauce hasn’t fully opened up. The soufflé collapsed. And for this feast, which is nearly but not quite finished, the kind of people who can hear a dollar bill landing on shag carpet will be asked to pay the bulk of a hundred grand. There may be resistance.

Rushing sausages to market before they’re fully cured has long been standard operating procedure at the Italian salumerie. Your humble author continues to serve on the testing and development team (otherwise known as the owner body) for the Lamborghini Espada—36 years after the car went out of production. And for decades, Maserati has been another punch line that proves the rule.

But after passing through the hands of various owners to land in the lap of Fiat Chrysler, Maserati’s prospects have never been better. The brand wants to more than triple its worldwide sales by 2015, to 50,000 units per year, through a barrage of new products. The attack plan started with the redesigned Quattroporte last year and now proceeds with the new Ghibli, which is basically a short-wheelbase Quattroporte. Later, an SUV will appear using similar hardware. While that last model is still in development, we want to send an urgent plea to management to slow down and take a breath. To figure out what elements make a Maserati special, what qualities are necessary to encourage customers to walk through a blossoming garden of excellent luxury products from blue-chip brands to select a car from the makers of the Biturbo.

Because it sure as heck isn’t the mediocre infotainment unit from the Dodge Charger. Or a powertrain that goes AWOL between idle and full throttle. Or seats that will be Christmas come early for chiropractors. If Maserati’s ambitions are to be anything more than the hot wind the Ghibli takes its name from, the company has to fix these problems now while it still has its finger on the brand’s reset button.

Much about the Ghibli appears to indicate undue haste, starting with its name, which seems expediently pilfered from Giugiaro’s two-door, two-seat masterpiece of 1967–1973. If anything, the new car should have been named for the later Kyalami, a 2+2 that was also a shortened Quattroporte. But that’s a petty complaint. More important, the styling just isn’t emotional enough. The Ghibli’s lurid cab-rearward proportions nicely evoke the previous-gen Q’porte, but it’s rendered in much heavier and more simplistic terms, especially in the rear third, where the hips need some liposuction. The back is so anonymous that it’ll be confused with any number of Asian pretenders. If a Maserati isn’t the most gorgeous car in its segment, what is it?

Well, this one is roughly the length of a Benz CLS or an Audi A7, but its wheelbase is considerably longer at 118 inches. You get a spacious 18-cubic-foot trunk out of the deal and a relatively large 21.1-gallon fuel tank (you’ll need it), but the rear seat shorts its occupants of legroom. Owners of Italian cars have long endured the complaints of their passengers because the driver’s seat was so fabulous, but here the Ghibli stumbles, too.

The front buckets have center sections that feel like leather wrapped around planks of mahogany. And these boards protrude, always pushing you out of the seat and leaving your upper back and shoulders dangling unsupported. After an hour, our backs were in spastic revolt.

After a week, you develop a certain numbness to it, which allows you to turn your attention forward. The cockpit design is uncomplicated, with its fans of leather upholstery and heavy slabs of carbon-fiber accent trim. That’s because it’s dominated by the seven-inch thin-film transistor (TFT) touch screen that turns many functions usually handled with real buttons, from seat heaters to the rear-window-shade control, into virtual buttons. Before you can do anything, though, including adjust the cabin temperature, you must “accept” the lawyer warning. Very five-years-ago.

TEST NOTES:Brake-torque the engine to 2950 rpm for the quickest launches. There's excellent power above 4500 rpm, and the transmission's close ratios keep the V-6 in the power band on upshifts. Soft power below 3000 rpm, as seen in the longish 5.8-second 5-60 time.

Think Maserati was messing around when it revealed plans to seriously amp up its global sales presence? Things should have looked pretty serious after the Italian automaker recently introduced not only…

Think Maserati was messing around when it revealed plans to seriously amp up its global sales presence? Things should have looked pretty serious after the Italian automaker recently introduced not only…

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